911 dispatcher: Good. Okay. Someone will be right over. A police officer will be there shortly. And I’ll stay on the phone until he comes. My name is Susan. Can you tell me, where in the house did you find your husband?

Hill: He wasn’t in the house. He was in the garage.

911 dispatcher: And you said there was a lot of blood. Did someone shoot him?

Hill: I don’t know. I don’t think so. There was so much blood it was hard to tell. I didn’t think it was Mark. I kept saying, it’s not him. It couldn’t be. But I saw his watch. He wears a Rolex.

911 dispatcher: And you said you touched him?

Hill: I touched his wrist to feel his pulse.

911 dispatcher: And you couldn’t feel anything?

Hill: I knew it. As soon as I saw him. I knew he was dead.

911 dispatcher: Can you tell me how you found him?

Hill: I came home. I went to pull the car in the garage and there he was. I saw him in my headlights. He was on the floor of the garage.

911 dispatcher: His car was in the garage?

Hill: No, just outside. Well, the one car—the one he was driving—was outside the garage and the other was inside. He has two cars.

911 dispatcher: Was the garage door open?

Hill: Yes.

911 dispatcher: The lights are off, though? The car wasn’t running?

Hill: No, the car wasn’t running.

911 dispatcher: Beth, the police should be there any minute. So hang on, okay?

Hill: (Incoherent).

911 dispatcher: If you want to say anything, you just go right ahead.

Hill: I can’t believe this is happening.

911 dispatcher: Beth, can you tell me whether you saw anything unusual? Was there a car you didn’t know parked down the street?

Hill: No. I didn’t see anything.

911 dispatcher: And do you know when your husband came home? Did he tell you when he was coming home?

Hill: Not exactly. He BlackBerry’d me around four to say that he was leaving the office early today and that he wouldn’t be late. But I don’t know when he left.

911 dispatcher: And how long does it take him to get home?

Hill: Around twenty minutes, depending on the traffic.

911 dispatcher: So you think somewhere around—(Beeping noise). Is someone trying to call?

Hill: (pause) It’s my neighbor.

911 dispatcher: You see the number in caller ID?

Hill: Yes. They must have heard me screaming.

911 dispatcher: Do you want to put me on hold and speak with them?

Hill: No. Wait, I hear something.

911 dispatcher: Is someone in the house? (pause) Beth, do you hear someone in the house?

Hill: It’s outside. I think they’re here.

911 dispatcher: Is there a window in the room you’re in?

Hill: (pause) Yes, there’s a police car outside.

911 dispatcher: Okay, Beth. I’m going to stay on the phone until you let them in. They’re aware of the situation.

Hill: Thank you. Thank you for your help. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to deal with this.

911 dispatcher: It’s all right. It’s quite all right.

END OF CALL

1/THE PERFECT CANDIDATE

A month before Beth Hill made her 911 call, the job posted on Craigslist.

Case assistant. Exoneration Foundation.

He’d been looking for weeks, but this was the first listing that really

jumped out at him, truly suited him, and that he thought he had a shot

at.

“Candidates must have strong analytic skills, attention to detail,

commitment to social justice,” the ad read. “Interest in criminal

justice issues, collegial and collaborative work style are a must,

candidates should be skilled in writing and presenting information

clearly and succinctly and dealing with emotionally charged situations

professionally.”

Check, check, and check.

So there he was ten days later sitting on a worn black leather sofa,

wearing a navy pinstripe suit that he’d picked up at a thrift shop. It

hung off him a little loosely. He’d walked from his apartment. He was

downtown, in SoMa—South of Market—on Third Street, in a small,

cheerless reception area that didn’t look so different from the waiting

areas of the state and city agencies he’d been obliged to visit in recent

months.

The Exoneration Foundation.

He’d known about the place before he saw the ad. Some called it

the “court of last resort,” but the foundation preferred a different, less

dramatic description. It was a nonprofit, pro-bono legal clinic that

represented prisoners whose wrongful convictions might be over-

turned through biological evidence, the kind that was overlooked,

misinterpreted, or botched in one way or another.

The founder was an attorney named Marty Lowenstein, a preeminent

DNA expert. To prison inmates he was simply known as the DNA

Dude. That’s what they called him. “Get the DNA Dude on it,” was

their mantra for every guy who claimed he was actually innocent. “Dial

that mofo up. He’ll get your actual ass off.” Fucking idiots. No one

believed it.

Marty Lowenstein was a do-gooder. An actual one. The poor,

the forgotten, the innocent schmuck on death row, the royally

screwed were his meat. The irony was that he owed his reputation to

representing a handful of rich pricks in high-profile cases that got big

spreads in Vanity Fair. Those people you didn’t always exonerate. You

got them off. You created reasonable doubt. But you didn’t get to walk

a guy out of prison after twenty-two years for a crime the evidence

clearly showed he didn’t commit and maybe even someone else had

copped to in the meantime. That was exoneration. Lowenstein got off

on it.

Richie Forman looked around. His suit fit right in. There was

something a decade or two passé about the décor, a little off, a little

tired. The furniture had obviously once served in another office,

probably a corporate law firm.

Smack at ten, the receptionist, a young black woman with straightened

hair, said the case director was coming out, she’d see him now. That

got his heart going. You’re going to crush this, he thought. This one’s

yours.

A moment later, a heavyset Hispanic woman with a pleasant face came

out and greeted him. Her name was Lourdes Hinojosa, and after she

shook his hand, she walked him back to her office. She looked fairly

young, early forties, but she had a pair of reading glasses on a chain

around her neck that made her look older, especially when she put them

on to scan his résumé.

He sat there anxiously watching her. As she read, she nodded a couple

of times but made no comment. The silence made him nervous. He

crossed, then uncrossed his legs. Finally, she took off her glasses and

looked at him with a renewed intensity.

“Richard—”

“Rick,” he said. “You can call me Rick.”

“Okay, sorry. Rick. I see you were in marketing at a dot-com.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you’re looking for a more noble calling. You understand,

though, that the case assistant position is an entry-level position.”

She obviously had seen his type before—or at least the type she

thought he was.

“Yes, I know. But—”

“We get a lot of people applying for this who are right out of college,

including schools back East,” she said, referencing his résumé. “You’ll

be doing a lot of grunt work. When was the last time you did grunt

work?”

He almost said “yesterday,” but he held his tongue. He was prepared

for this, the not-so-subtle age discrimination. He looked good for thirty-

seven—but not that good.

“You might want to look again, Ms. Hinojosa. I was in marketing—but

a long time ago.”

She put her glasses back on and looked at the sheet.

“Oh,” she said, reading the dates more carefully. “Wow. Seven years.”

She looked at him again. “What have you been doing since then?”

“Time,” he said.

Her eyes opened wide.

“Out in gold country,” he added. “Mule Creek.”

“You’ve been in prison?”

“Yes.”

He noticed her eyes zeroing in on the long scar on the right upper side

of his forehead. He could have hidden the blemish better, but he kept

his dark hair slicked back and parted to the other side—the left. The

style was a little short to be a true pompadour, but it was longer on top

and had some wave to it. She’d noticed the scar when he was in the

outer office but probably thought it was some sort of athletic injury.

Now it seemed to take on new meaning for her.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what did you do?”

“Technically speaking, in the eyes of the court, I was responsible

for the death of a twenty-four-year-old woman. Felony vehicular

manslaughter with gross negligence.”

“Oh.”

“But there were extenuating circumstances.”

He reached in his bag and pulled out a small sheaf of papers that he’d

stapled together. They were mostly news clips, but he also had a couple

reference letters thrown in at the end, both of them from the owners of

restaurants where he’d worked recently.

He handed the packet to her. “In the interest of full disclosure, I thought

you should have this.”

She leafed through the clips, starting with the San Francisco Chronicle

piece that would forever label the post-bachelor party accident

the “Bachelor Disaster,” then moved on to the San Jose Mercury

News’s similarly provocative headline, TRADING PLACES, with the

subhead, “Bachelor Party Boy Says He Wasn’t Behind Wheel, Friend

Switched Seats After Accident.” There were pieces from the local

papers, too, covering the trial and subsequent civil lawsuit.

“I vaguely remember this,” she murmured, her eyes betraying

conflicting emotions: she seemed partly empathetic, partly perturbed.

“As you might imagine,” he said, “I feel uniquely qualified for the

position. How many recent college graduates do you know who can say

they have a corporate background and the kind of personal experience I

have with this foundation’s potential clients?”

She didn’t seem to know quite how to respond. Perhaps she expected

him to smile after he made his declaration, inject it with a little humor,

but he didn’t. He said it with a straight face, deadly serious.

For good measure, he added: “I also have a keen understanding of what

it’s like to be in a place where you don’t think you should be.”

She looked at his scar again. Then, touching the side of her forehead in

the same spot, she asked:

“Did you get that in prison?”

“Yes.” He pointed to a smaller scar just under his left eyebrow. “This

one, too. But on the basketball court.”

Before he was sent away, he’d been in decent shape. He ran twice a

week and played some pickup games at the Jewish Community Center

in Palo Alto. In the joint, though, he’d gotten ripped. He was putting

up close to three hundred on the bench, which, for a guy his size—

five-eleven, one seventy-five—was serious. And since getting out, he’d

mostly kept up his workout regimen. The fact that he could wear the

Boss suit, a size fifty, was a testament to that. Before he went up, he

was two sizes smaller.

“I had six bad months behind bars, Ms. Hinojosa,” he said. “The rest

wasn’t cake. But it was manageable. I helped some guys. I wrote some

of the letters you probably received at one time or another. I have, as

your ad says, an understanding of criminal justice issues.”

She nodded.

“And you also understand that the starting salary for the job is twenty-

seven thousand dollars?”

“That’s better than I thought.”

“How much were you making before you went to prison?”

“In a good year, counting stock and bonus, multiply by ten.”

Now he did smile. And she did, too.

“Long gone,” he said. “Whatever wasn’t taken up in legal fees went to

the accident victims’ families.”

Seeing her confusion, he quickly added: “A second woman was

injured. Her roommate.”

“Not your fault, though. You were innocent?”

“I didn’t say that. There were extenuating circumstances.”

With that, she looked at his résumé again.

“Well, Mr. Forman,” she said. “You certainly meet the qualifications.

But ultimately, I have to run this past a few other people. We have two

case coordinators, one of whom isn’t here today, and a second case

assistant who you’d share an office with.”

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll volunteer for a couple of weeks. You

The Big Exit

David Carnoy is an executive editor at CNET and is interviewed regularly on television as a tech expert, appearing on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, The Huffington Post, and other media outlets. His acclaimed thrillers The Big Exit and Knife Music are available from Overlook Press . He lives in New York City with his wife and children.